Nintendo's track record in promoting amiibo through free apps isn't one that's always shown the company at its best. amiiboTap: Nintendo's Greatest Bits, for example, was a bit rubbish and unsure of its audience. With efforts like that it's just as well that the range and compatible games mean the figures (and cards) practically sell themselves.

Assessing a free download isn't always easy, with judgement resting on whether it provides good entertainment for your time and a solid showcase for amiibo figures. Mini Mario & Friends does rather well on both those criteria, successfully delivering a range of puzzle stages following the well-worn formula of the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series. Miniature toys march relentlessly on, and it's your job to quickly and efficiently prepare their path.

As highlighted in our review of the Wii U version, this doesn't quite live up to the standards of its full paid entries in the series, but does offer nice variety and some high quality levels. 12 stages are available if a non-Mario-themed figure is scanned (amiibo cards don't work), and they're over quickly but are relatively charming. Plenty more open up with compatible amiibo, however, and with each character having distinctive abilities there are plenty of stages and some clever moments to enjoy. Occasionally level design is slightly underwhelming, but as a whole it's a solid package, even if - like this reviewer - you're lacking 2 or 3 of the figures and missing out on their related areas.

We've covered all of that before, as mentioned above, so what's the difference when playing on 3DS rather than Wii U? Impressively, not much. Visuals that are clean but rather plain on Wii U suit the smaller screens of the 3DS better, so it's a rather handsome effort on the portable. The dual screen setup works better, too, with the bottom touchscreen hosting the gameplay and stylus controls while the top screen shows a wider view (which is on the TV when playing on Wii U). With the handheld the disconnect on Wii U - which meant we often played GamePad-only, forgetting to turn the TV on - is stripped away, and the stage map is undoubtedly convenient to have right there above your eye-line. The only disappointment is that there's no 3D effect, but that's hardly surprising in light of this being a free download across both current-gen systems.

The gameplay holds up nicely on 3DS, in any case, with smooth performance and responsive controls. A little extra care is needed with the stylus, as the smaller New 3DS in particular has a lot less real estate than the GamePad; we never lost any lives because of input mistakes, but just occasionally placed an extra block or two.

Switching out amiibo characters - which is done frequently - also works very nicely on the New 3DS; in fact, our portable's NFC reader is a bit more snappy and needs less persuasion than our occasionally erratic GamePad equivalent. We can imagine it'd be a little more fiddly on older models, however, with players needing to dig out their NFC portal to play, but that's hardly the app's fault.

Overall, then, it's a solid effort on the 3DS, with the same visuals (just output at a lower resolution) and performance. In some ways the game suits the portable better - after all its predecessors are handheld games - and feels very much at home. As this is a Nintendo cross-platform game, however, if you have it on both Wii U and 3DS you'll need to play through twice on fresh saves. There's no cross-saving here, don't be silly!

Conclusion

Mini Mario & Friends: amiibo Challenge holds up well on 3DS, with the franchise at home on portable hardware. In a pinch we probably prefer playing on the hefty GamePad screen, but ultimately both versions of the game provide some solid amiibo fun at no extra cost. It's worth a spin on either system.

The reason why some people thinking twice to buy Nintendo stuffs is because a lot of requirements to play even the simplest game like this. Some people usually tends to be a cheapskater, so they want to play something simple and cheap. For some gamers, really complicated way to play is still okay for them but for the other people (especially casual gamer on NON gamer), it can be tedious. Some of them are too lazy to do something complicated and give up easily. Better Nintendo making simple and WOW games with optional requirement to play for Freebies stuffs. Just don't focused on Amiibo too much.

It bugs me how you have to scan in your amiibo every time you want to play... so you can't just scan a friends amiibo and pick them from the title screen, you NEED that amiibo everytime you want to play. I guess it's to make sure you've got your own, but how annoying!

@Moon From the beginning I knew this would be a problem for amiibo play on the Wii U, but not quite for the reason you think.

Skylanders, really the first of the toys-to-life games, had a very big marketing push and explanation of actually brining toys to life. You weren't using the toys to unlock DC behind a paywall, you were actually brining those toys to life on a portal of power and helping them to reclaim their land in the story. You played with whatever 1 or 2 toys you placed on the portal to bring them to life in the game.

But with the Gamepad NFC chip that really isn't an option. You can't bring a toy to life and play with it, all you really can do is unlock DLC, b/c there is no way to play a game while holding the toy to the Gamepad. The Wii U pulls back the current on the Wizard of Oz and screams out "The emperor has no clothes!"

So you are right, all the amiibo does in this game is unlock DLC, in this case a level, b/c you are losing the illusion that the other games have of playing as the character only while it is on the portal. When you break through that illusion of playing as the toy, the ugliness of paid DLC is brought to light. The other toys to life do a better job of hiding their function as paid DLC b/c you only play as them while they are on the portal, it makes easy to understand sense. amiibo ruin the suspension of belief. There's just no other way for them to work with the Gamepad.

@BensonUii The concept being that you bring the toy-to-life, yeah? Well, it does display the name of the amiibo you scan, other than that it doesn't feel very personal or 'toys-to-life' to me. Just feels like a way to unlock the leves. I see what you mean though.

@rjejr I completely agree. Not only that but they're supposed to be toys-to-life, right? Well, they're pretty bad toys. There's absolutely zero articulation in them for a start!

I've played partway through the Wii-U version, however anyone with an older 3DS and no portal will be bummed out pretty quick. Pretty good game overall and I have all the Amiibos including elusive Rosalina, so I will be playing them at my leisure. Neat that they all have slightly different abilities so that adds replay value. Now I simply wish there were a Pauline Amiibo made specially for this game!

@rjejr the gen that played with these also first played most older video games like pong-pacman-n64-Gcube. The people that first played those are in thier (our) 50-60's yeah we're old so what?Age=Experience Did you think 20 or 30 somethings invented video games?